We spent last Saturday at Kansas City Maker Faire, which is one of our favorite things to do as a family every year. The Maker Faire has amazing inventions, interesting technology, fun activities, and plenty of nerd culture references: enough to keep any sort of nerd overjoyed and engaged. In addition to giving us grown up nerds a chance to connect with other Makers and get a feel for what’s happening in the world of technology, it’s also an awesome opportunity to spare kids’ interest in STEM fields by showing how FUN those areas can be.

Here’s a peek into what we saw and did at this year’s Faire:

A bit of what you’re seeing up there:

micro controllers / 3D printers (LOTS of 3D printers) / new apps / new search engines / robots (we had fun watching high school robotics teams compete!) / a giant inflated playground just for fun / making slime / life sized TARDIS and a Dalek (boy, did Jonas love up on that Dalek) / Lego pits and a Rube Goldberg Lego machine / fantastic artists / LARPing / viewing tiny ecosystems through giant microscopes / tons of great tools for building and making

We didn’t even touch the tip of the iceberg with the camera (we skipped photographing a lot of the things we’ve taken pictures of other years). We spent five or six hours submerged in awesomeness and we’re still kind of floating from it.